bBz7 




Class 




Book . 



Copyright N° 



COPYHIGHT DEPOSIT. 



HAVERHILL 1640-1915 



HISTORY IS THE WITNESS OF THE TIMES, 
THE TORCH OF TRUTH, THE LIFE OF 
MEMORY, THE TEACHER OF LIFE, THE 
MESSENGER OF ANTIQUITY. 

—Cicero. 



Copyright, 1915, by Albert L. Bartlett. 



Privately printed and limited to Three Hundred 
Copies, of which this is No. / 



HAVERHILL 

AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS 

BY THE 

HONORABLE ALBERT LEROY BARTLETT 
MAYOR OF THE CITY 




Given at the Exercises Commemorative of the 
Two-Hundred-and-Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of 
the Settlement of the City, on Sunday, October 
the Tenth, Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen. 



HAVERHILL 
MCMXV 



.H6 ■ 



Wise was the choice which led our sires 
To kindle here their household fires, 
And share the large content of all 
Whose lines in pleasant places fall. 

More dear, as years on years advance, 
We prize the old inheritance, 
And feel, as far and wide we roam, 
That all we seek we leave at home. 

-Haverhill: Whittier. 




FEB -7 1916 



HAVERHILL 1640-1916. 



HAVERHILL. 



AM going to tell you as well as I can in 
the time that your patience allows me, in 
simple lines, the story of this old city that 
was named Haverhill at the very beginning of its 
settlement, two-hundred-and-seventy-five years 
ago, and that occupies the site of an Indian vil- 
lage, called Pentucket, long abandoned when the 
white settlers first came here. So rich is this 
history, so full of traditions, so abounding in 
delightful and eventful by-ways is this story, 
that were I to relate it all, the night would fall 
and the morrow come and the morrow's morrow 
before I reached the end. Much, therefore, 
that I would tell you I must leave untold; or, 
better, I must invite you to read it yourselves 
in the abundant literature that contains it. 
However imperfectly I may perform my task, I 
hope to help you to appreciate thoughtfully the 
high purpose, the courage, the indomitable will, 
that planted a home here in the wilderness, that 
bore hardship and fatigue, that braved dangers, 
that withstood tyranny, that fought for freedom, 
that gave sacrifices of its dearest for national 
honor and unity, that painfully planted the seed 
of industries and prosperity, and left the price- 
less inheritance of it all for our enjoyment. 

[7] 



Haverhill 1640-1916 

TO ALL THOSE WHO HERE HAVE LIVED 
WORTHY AND USEFUL LIVES-STURDY 
MANHOOD AND BRAVE AND HELPFUL 
WOMANHOOD.-I OFFER FIRST THE TRI- 
BUTE OF GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE. 

Three centuries ago the Merrimac,--the river of 
the swift current,— springing from a little tarn 
far up on the side of one of the White Moun- 
tains, joined by many a lesser river and stream, 
flowing through meadow lands and rushing 
adown rocky falls, saw in its course to the ocean 
only the few and rude villages of the Indians 
by its banks, and bore on its surface only their 
bark or log canoes. No dam sought to check its 
waters, no bridge crossed its flood, no hum or 
whir of wheels broke upon the music of its 
flow. The deer drank from its waters, the wolf 
stole from out the forests on its borders, the 
myriad fish lived in its depths. The salmon, 
leaving in the spring its ocean home, swam in 
great numbers against its tide and leaped its 
falls to seek in quiet and remote pools places 
where safely it might lay its spawn. In the fer- 
tile plains along its course the Indians planted 
the maize, scratching the earth with a clam 

[8] 



An Historical Address 

shell to receive the seed and leaving the up- 
springing grain to grow without care. Where 
the deer or other game seemed abundant the 
Indians had their hunting grounds, and at the 
river falls where the salmon could be caught 
most easily they placed their weirs. They set 
their villages where grain or game or fish could 
be procured with little effort. These villages 
were merely groups of wigwams,— circular tents 
made of poles covered with skins. The places 
where these villages were set were named from 
some characteristic of the locality,— Penacook, 
the crooked river; Amoskeag, at the fish place; 
Nashua, the land between the rivers; Wamesit, 
the place for all, because in the season of abund- 
ant fish all of the tribes would gather there; 
while to the river they gave two names, Merri- 
mac, the river of the swift current, and Mono- 
mack, the river of many islands. 
The Merrimac was the great river to these 
Indians, and into this great river at Pentucket 
there flowed a smaller stream which we know 
as Little River, winding then with many a turn 
between beautiful wooded banks, falling over a 
rocky ledge where the woolen mills now are, 
and still farther up stream offering in quiet pools 
[»] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

homes for the salmon and the trout. The plains 
eastward of Little River were fertile, the woods 
supplied game, fish were abundant in all the 
waters,— and so the Indians in the village of 
Pentucket, the place by the winding river, found 
here the easy living that suited their indolent 
nature. Their wigwams were grouped beside 
the winding stream, just east of where Little 
River joins the Merrimac, where now Emerson 
street comes into Washington Square. 
So the first picture of the place that we call 
Haverhill and that the Indians called Pentucket 
must be of a little group of wigwams, perhaps 
no more than twenty or thirty in number, with 
the great river in front of them, the smaller 
winding stream west of them, and the forest 
east and north and west beyond. Through that 
forest there were only the narrow paths by which 
the Indians passed in single file when they 
wandered north and west. For the Indians 
were a roaming people, moving from one place 
to another as their desires led them. These 
earliest dwellers here wore the skins of animals 
in winter, but in summer they went almost 
naked. They painted their bodies and ornament- 
ed themselves with feathers, they wore bracelets 

[10] 



An Historical Address 

of shells and bones, and from their ears and 
noses were hung rings. In person they were 
straight and strong and lean; their hair was 
coarse and black; their eyes were deep-set and 
small; and their lips were protuberant. Their 
tools were very simple,— their hatchet of stone, 
their hoe a clam shell or the shoulder blade of 
the moose, their fishhook a sharpened bone. 
They were silent and indolent, passing long 
periods of time in smoking or sleeping or sitting 
without speaking. Their lives were as useless as 
those of the beasts that they hunted, and their 
claim to the land no more tenable. 
In the years 1616 and 1617 disease fell upon the 
Indians of New England, and great numbers of 
them died. Whole villages wasted away, and 
the tribes were reduced to feeble remnants of 
their former strength. Whether the Indians of 
Pentucket were destroyed by this epidemic or 
removed to join some other village we do not 
know, but the place was deserted before the 
white settlers came up the river in 1640, and no 
traces of the red men existed except some stone 
arrow heads, fragments of stone tools, the bones 
of their dead, and—so tradition says— a single 
abandoned wigwam in the East meadow. So 
[ii] 



Haverhill 1640-1916 

of Pentucket, the Indian village, there remained 
only its name. Its beautiful site by the great 
river and the winding river, its fertile lands and 
sparkling streams and lakes that lay like silver 
sheen amid the sombre forests, were destined 
to attract a far different people,— a little company 
of English Puritans, high in character, dauntless 
in courage and strong in Saxon will, who here, 
amid dangers and privations, laid the founda- 
tions of Haverhill. 

The foundations of New England, of the Com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts, were laid by men 
of remarkable character. Some of them were 
representatives of the patrician blood of Eng- 
land, some were of the middle class of craftsmen 
and tradesmen, many of them were graduates 
of the English universities and profound students 
of the moral and political subjects of the times, 
and all were men of strong judgments, stern 
wills and unyielding purposes. Neither Boston 
nor Salem better exemplifies the strength of 
character, the untrammeled spirit and the puis- 
sance that formed Massachusetts, than does 
Ipswich, whose child Haverhill is, and whose 
earliest years felt the impulse of the intellectual 
strength of the Winthrops, the Dudleys, the 

[12] 



An Historical Address 

Saltonstalls, the Bradstreets, and that Nathaniel 
Ward to whom is due the settlement of Haver- 
hill. 

Born in Haverhill, England, educated at Emman- 
uel College, Cambridge, and in Heidelberg, 
enjoying the friendship of such eminent scholars 
as Sir Francis Bacon and David Pareus, the 
famous German theologian, turning from the 
law to the church, excommunicated in 1633 by 
Archbishop Laud because of his unyielding 
Puritanism, bereft of his wife and lonely and 
despairing of any usefulness in England, emi- 
grating to Massachusetts in the sixty-fourth 
year of his age, Nathaniel Ward settled in Ips- 
wich in 1634, writing over the fireplace of his 
home the Latin legend, "Sobrie, Juste, Pie, 
Laete,"—soberly, justly, piously, gladly,-- as the 
motto under which he took up the labors of life 
in the new world. The richness of his legal 
learning, his knowledge of civic administration 
in the old world, and the ripeness of his judgment 
caused the General Court to request him to draw 
up a code of written statutes for the Colony, and 
to this work he gave the constancy of his labors 
for three years. This code of a hundred laws 
was completed in 1641, submitted to the discus- 

[13] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

sion of every town in the Colony, and adopted 
under the title of the Body of Liberties. Of the 
Preamble to this document it has been said, 
"It has the movement and the dignity of a 
mind like John Milton's or Algernon Sidney's, 
and its theory of government was far in advance 
of the age. A bold avowal of human rights, and 
a plea for popular freedom, it contains the germ 
of the immortal Declaration of Independence." 
The eldest son of Nathaniel Ward, the Reverend 
John Ward, born in Haverhill, England, Novem- 
ber 5, 1606, educated in the University of Cam- 
bridge, married in the church of St. Leonard 
in Foster Lane, London, in June, 1636, to Alice 
Edmonds, came with his young wife to New 
England in 1639, and for a while acted as assist- 
ant to his uncle, the Reverend Ezekiel Rogers, 
in the church in Rowley. Being not fully accept- 
able to some of the people of this parish he 
joined his father and his brother-in-law, Gyles 
Firman, a physician, in Ipswich. Thinking the 
hamlet of Ipswich overcrowded with ministers 
and doctors, Nathaniel Ward planned a new set- 
tlement in which his son and his son-in-law 
might have greater promise of support. He 
therefore wrote letters and prepared petitions to 
[M] 



An Historical Address 

his kinsman, Governor John Winthrop, and to 
the General Court, and in May, 1640, there was 
granted to him and his fellow petitioners a 
plantation on the Merrimac, "provided they 
build there before the next General Court." 
When in acceptance of this grant the pioneer 
settlers came up the river to establish their 
homes at Pentucket,--just when we do not know, 
but we like to think that it was in the beauti- 
ful month of June, 1640,—they moored their 
pinnace where a brook,~Mill Brook,— came 
purling down to join the Merrimac, and they 
chose the land close by, stretching west along 
the river from the present location of Pentucket 
Cemetery, for their dwellings. They found no 
red men living in the locality, no wigwams 
standing there. But though no one appeared to 
dispute their possession, the colonists recognized 
the proprietary rights as belonging to Passa- 
conaway's tribe, and as soon as they could meet 
the representatives of the great chief,— the deed 
is dated November 15, 1642,— they bought the 
tract extending eight miles west from Little 
River and six miles east from the same bound, 
and six miles north, for three pounds and ten 
shillings. The document, a precious possession 

[15] 



Haverhill 1640-1916 

of the Haverhill Historical Society, is signed by 
John Ward, Robert Clements, Tristram Coffyn, 
Hugh Sherratt, William White, who wrote the 
deed, and Thomas Davis, for the colonists; and 
by Passaquo and Saggahew, by their mark of 
a bow and arrow, for Passaconaway. 
So by the great river and near the Mill Brook 
these earliest settlers,~they were Abraham 
Tyler, Daniel Ladd, James Davis, John Robin- 
son and Joseph Merrie, who possibly came in 
1640; John Ward, John Fawn, Hugh Sherratt, 
Job Clements, William White, Samuel Guile and 
Richard Littlehale, who probably settled here in 
1641 ; and Robert Clements and Tristram Coffyn 
who were dwellers here in 1642; and each year 
thereafter brought new men,— built their homes, 
rude houses of logs, no doubt, with the crevices 
filled with clay, each with its lot of a few acres, 
and placed in friendly and protective neighbor- 
hood. About the house they planted their orch- 
ards and made their gardens, and the Black- 
stone and russet apples grew there, and the 
dear English flowers, heartease and mignonette, 
rue and rosemary,— for all these were brought in 
the ships that sailed from the Old England to the 
New. 

[i«] 



An Historical Address 

But the grass lands and the grazing lands and 
the planting lands were farther away and often 
widely separated. Daniel Ladd's "accommoda- 
tions," for instance, were scattered from East 
meadow,~near Whittier's birthplace,— to the 
Spicket meadows in the present confines of 
Methuen. Surely only the Saxon will could 
conquer the difficulties and wrest a living from 
the soil when there was not only the work of 
clearing and planting the land, but also the 
effort of reaching the "accommodations" 
through roadless forests and over bridgeless 
streams, with packs of roaming wolves eager to 
attack the solitary settler or his flocks. 
The first winter in the new settlement, 1640- 
1641, was one of terrible severity. Boston Har- 
bor was frozen over and for six weeks passable 
for oxen and loaded carts, and the depth of the 
snow was great. The hardships of those earlier 
years is pathetically told in the death of thirteen 
children in the little hamlet before the year 1644, 
—frail flowers of the wilderness too delicate to 
endure cold and privation,— and of twenty-seven 
other children and seven adults before the year 
1663. 
Stern in the faith the colonists worshipped 

[17] 



Haverhill 1640-1916 

under the leadership of their "Learned, Ingen- 
ous and Religious" minister, John Ward, at 
first in the houses of the settlement or under a 
great spreading oak, and later in the little log 
meeting house that was built in 1648 "on the 
lower end on the Mill lot,"— a tiny structure 
twenty-six feet long and twenty wide. The sound 
of the drum or the horn on Sunday morning 
summoned them to the long service, the men ov- 
er eighteen carrying muskets and fire arms, and 
sentinels watching lest the dread foe, the Indian, 
attack them unawares. On the front of the 
church the heads of marauding wolves were 
often nailed, and on the door the laws and public 
notices were always posted. Too often after the 
services there followed the trial of offenders, or 
the penitent confessions of those who had trans- 
gressed. 

Although the settlement was not incorporated as 
a town until 1645, the principle of the town 
meeting was active from the first, and there were 
public meetings for the discussion of all public 
business, matters relating to land divisions, the 
regulating of who should be permitted to join 
the town, the minister's salary, the encourage- 
ment of industries, and all else that pertained to 

[18] 



An Historical Address 

the government or security of the settlement. 
If the beginnings of Haverhill were made in 
days of privation and toil,— 

"Slow from the plough the woods withdrew, 
Slowly each year the cornlands grew, 
Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill, 
The Saxon energy of will,"— 

they were made in days of dread and danger, 
also. The little cleared spaces where their rude 
houses were built were bounded north and east 
and west by the far-reaching forests. And the 
forest was the place of fear, for out of it might 
steal— the wolf : the panther?— possibly; but more 
surely a foe stealthier, more treacherous, more 
cruel than these beasts of prey,— the Indian. 
The lone traveler, the farmer in the field, the 
wife and children in the home, might at any 
time be attacked by the dread enemy. In single 
file and noiselessly the Indians tracked the 
forests. The arrow or the shot from some covert, 
the rush of the painted, hideous foe from some 
hiding place, the awful fiendish yell of the sav- 
ages, marked the sudden attack. The red men 
felt no compassion; they knew no mercy. They 

[19] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

killed and tortured and scalped their victims; 
they burned their homes; they massacred the 
women and children, or bore them away as 
captives. They made the attack and did their 
bloody and lurid work with great swiftness, and 
as speedily and as silently as they had come 
they made their retreat. Undoubtedly the fear 
of the red men dwelt ever in the hearts of the 
colonists, but within the first thirty-five years of 
the life of the settlement,— 1640— 1675,— there 
were no signs of Indian hostility, and the stock- 
ade around the meeting house was even allowed 
to fall into decay. Then fear quickened and 
became acute; and in the years following the 
ruthless Indian did not spare the town. Indeed 
the dread and terror became so oppressive that 
in March, 1690, the town in public meeting 
seriously considered abandoning the settlement 
and removing to some less exposed place. The 
history of those days is full of dramatic incidents, 
and there are pages lurid with flame and red 
with the blood of the victims. Notable is that 
attack on March 15, 1697, when the savages, 
falling upon the place, plundered and burned 
nine houses, killed twenty-seven persons, of 
whom thirteen were children, and carried away 

[20] 



An Historical Address 

thirteen captives. The attack is memorable not 
alone for the havoc wrought, but also because of 
the heroism of Hannah Duston, one of those 
captured in the foray. 

Two miles northwest from the centre of the 
village was the farm of Thomas Duston. Here, 
probably where Eudora street is now, he had 
built a cottage in 1677 to which he brought his 
bride, Hannah Emerson, whom he married in 
December of that year. Twenty years later, in 
1696, because the little house seemed too small 
for his growing family,~there were seven chil- 
dren living then, and four had died previously,— 
selecting a site still farther west, he began to 
build a larger and stronger house of brick. On 
the eighth of March, 1697, a twelfth child was 
born to Mrs. Duston, and to care for the mother 
and the infant Mrs. Mary Neff, whose home was 
a mile nearer the village, had come to act as 
nurse. 

It was the fifteenth of March. The wood fire 
on the hearth in the kitchen of the little cottage 
of the Dustons threw its glow over the few and 
simple furnishings of the humble home. It 
flickered over the bed on which Mrs. Duston 
lay weak and ill; it gave faint color to the piece 

[21] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

of linen still in the loom, which she had been 
weaving before her illness; it shone on the 
week-old baby in her arms, to whom she had 
given the name Martha. With no apprehension 
of danger, Thomas Duston had started to go on 
horseback to a distant part of his farm. He had 
gone but a little distance when with horror he 
saw stealing forth silently from the woods on 
the north a band of Indians, moving stealthily 
but swiftly towards his house. He turned his 
horse, galloped back, shouted to his children to 
flee, and tried to get his wife from the bed that 
he might help her to escape. There was not 
time. Urged by his wife to save the children, he 
seized his musket, leaped on his horse, and rode 
to overtake them. At first, thinking it was im- 
possible to save all, he planned to seize one or 
two from the group and ride rapidly away. But 
when he came to his children the father's heart 
could make no choice, and he resolved to de- 
fend all and bring them to safety or die with 
them. Dismounting, he placed his horse be- 
tween his children and the enemy, rested his 
musket across the back of the animal, and 
bringing it swiftly to bear on any Indian who 
came into the open—for they skulked behind 

[22] 



An Historical Address 

trees— he kept the foe at bay and brought all 
in safety to the garrison house of Onesiphorus 
Marsh, a mile from his home. 
In that home the nurse, Mary Neff, had hastily 
cut the woven cloth from the loom and wrapped 
the infant in it, and was starting in flight when 
the Indians reached the door. They siezed her 
and the child, dragged Mrs. Duston from the 
bed, set fire to the house with fagots from the 
hearth, and immediately started with the cap- 
tives on the retreat. The baby cried, and the 
mother saw a savage snatch it from the arms of 
the nurse, and dash it to death against a tree. 
Her eyes were dry, but in her heart grief for 
her child was rivalled by hatred for its mur- 
derers. With the Indians to whom these Haver- 
hill captives were given was an English boy, 
Samuel Leonardson, who had been captured in 
Worcester in the autumn of 1695, and who had 
learned the language and customs of the Indians 
in his captivity. Through him Mrs. Duston and 
Mrs. Neff learned what their fate was to be,~ 
that they were to be made to run the gauntlet, 
naked, and then sold into captivity. Cool and 
undaunted they planned a different fate. Under 
their directions the boy asked of the unsuspect- 

[23] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

ing Indians how they struck to kill with a single 
blow, and how they took the scalp lock. While 
they were encamped on a small island in the 
Merrimac, a few miles above Concord, on the 
night of March 30, just before dawn and while 
the sleep of the savages was soundest, the three 
captives arose and gliding among their enemies 
killed ten of them by striking them as the boy 
had been taught. A wounded squaw escaped, 
and an Indian boy was spared. 
Then the three captives gathered what provi- 
sions were in the wigwam and, scuttling all the 
canoes but one, embarked on the freshet-swollen 
waters of the river. Hardly had they pushed off 
from land when Mrs. Duston bethought herself 
that the story of so remarkable a deed might not 
be believed without proof. So they turned back, 
scalped the Indians whom they had slain, wrapped 
these grim proofs of their deed in the piece of 
linen that had been about the infant when it 
was killed, and once more pushed out into the 
river. The frail canoe brought the fugitives 
safely down the river to Haverhill, and they 
landed where Bradley's Brook joins the Merri- 
mac. With what surprise and joy must they 
have been received ! how, in her captivity and 

[24] 



An Historical Address 

flight, Mrs. Duston must have wondered what 
fate had befallen the family she left! what 
tales must have been told at the reunion! what 
plans were to be formed for the future ! Thomas 
Duston took the returned ones past the ashes of 
the old home to the new brick house, where a 
garrison had been established. Mrs. Duston 
lived long after her adventure, dying in 1736 at 
the age of seventy-nine. In her letter asking 
admission to the church, in 1724, she quaintly 
says: "I am Thankful for my Captivity; 'twas 
the Comfortablest time I ever had, "--meaning 
that God made His word and promises of the 
utmost comfort in her direst distress. 
Mrs. Mary Neff, the nurse and companion of 
Mrs. Duston, was the eldest of the seven daugh- 
ters of George Corliss and was born in a log 
house on the Corliss grant in the West parish, 
the estate long known as "Poplar Lawn." 
After her escape she returned to her home on 
the southern side of Pecker Hill, and there 
lived until her death in 1722. A part of her farm 
now constitutes Passaquo Park. The boy cap- 
tive, Samuel Leonardson as his name is written 
in the chronicles of the time, was kidnaped by 
the Indians near Lake Quinsigamond, in Wor- 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

cester, in September, 1696, when he was twelve 
years old. No tidings of his fate came to his 
family until he escaped with Mrs. Duston and 
Mrs. Neff. His mother had died of anxiety and 
grief during his absence; and after his return 
he lived almost in obscurity in Connecticut, 
never willingly conversing on the events of his 
capture and escape, possibly because of fear of 
vengeance on the part of the Indians, or possibly 
affected by the horror of the occurrences. He 
died in Prescott, Connecticut, in May, 1718. 
The last and most disastrous Indian attack was 
made on August 29, 1708, just before sunrise. 
In the hostilities of Queen Anne's War an at- 
tack was planned by the French in Canada on 
New England. It was the intention to destroy 
Portsmouth first, and then to spread desolation 
on the whole frontier. The English were warned, 
scouts and soldiers were set to protect the New 
Hampshire towns, and the original plan was 
frustrated. Then the French and Indians, two 
hundred or more in number, turned their plans 
to an attack upon Haverhill, a hamlet of less than 
thirty houses, and defended by very few soldiers. 
On this August morning just as the first flush- 
ings of light shone in the east, John Keezar, an 

[26] 



An Historical Address 

eccentric man, a great walker and leaper,~it was 
told that he had walked to Boston and back in a 
single night, and that with a heavy pail of milk 
in each hand he could leap over a cart,~return- 
ing from Amesbury saw the savages emerging 
from the woods close by the village and near 
where the Soldiers' Monument now stands. At 
full speed he rushed down the hill to the heart 
of the village, shouting the alarm, and at the 
meeting house he discharged his musket to 
alarm the town. The people were asleep and 
unguarded. Awakened by Keezar's shouting 
and the report of his musket, they heard imme- 
diately following it the terrific yell of the foe. 
Hideous in their war paint and with demoniac 
shrieks they came, dividing and scattering as 
was their custom that they might at one time 
make many attacks. One party rushed to the 
home of the minister, Benjamin Rolfe, standing 
where the High School now is. Three soldiers 
formed the garrison of this house, but they were 
craven and useless by fear. Rolfe leaped from 
his bed to defend the front entrance of his house, 
but a shot through the door wounded him in the 
elbow. The door yielded and the foe, pursuing 
him through the house, killed the minister by 

[27] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

the well at the back door. The three soldiers, 
Mrs. Rolfe and her youngest child, were vic- 
tims of the tomahawks of the Indians. Two other 
children, however, were saved by the quickness 
and wit of Hagar, a servant, who carried them 
to the cellar and concealed them beneath two 
tubs, while she herself hid behind a barrel. The 
Indians pillaged the cellar and even trod on the 
foot of one of the children, but without discov- 
ering them. Anne Whittaker, was staying in 
the house, hid herself in an apple-chest and 
escaped. 

West of the meeting house stood the home of 
Thomas Hartshorne. The foe attacked this, 
killed Mr. Hartshorne and his two sons as they 
ran out, seized an infant that was in the attic 
and threw it from the window, but failed to 
find Mrs. Hartshorne and the other children 
who had concealed themselves in the cellar. 
The infant thrown from the window lived to be- 
come a man of great stature and strength. 
The house of Captain Simon Wainwright, on 
Winter street, was attacked by one of the parties 
and the captain was killed, but the soldiers there 
drove off the savages. An attack upon the house 
of Mr. Swan, opposite the Wainwright house, 

[28] 



An Historical Address 

was repulsed by the bravery of Mrs. Snow, who 
siezed a long spit and with great strength drove 
it quite through the body of the foremost Indian 
as he was forcing his way into the house. 
Another band attacked the house of Lieutenant 
John Johnson, standing where the Exchange 
Building on Water Street is now, killed his wife 
in the garden to which she had fled, but left 
alive the baby at her breast. 
The enemy was put to flight by a ruse. A citizen 
of no mean wit, Ephraim Davis, beat violently 
on the back of the Rolfe barn, crying out, "Come 
on! Come on! We will have them," and the foe, 
thinking that a party of soldiers were coming, 
fled in retreat. Meanwhile the town had been 
generally aroused, and the enemy were pursued. 
In the skirmish that ensued the score or more 
of Haverhill men defeated the savages who 
outnumbered them many fold, and sent them 
like harried animals into the woods. 
So early was this attack, so swift was the action, 
that the sun had hardly risen when the retreat 
began. It saw as it mounted the heavens the 
smouldering fires that had been kindled, the 
massacred men and women and children of the 
town to the number of sixteen, the captives 

[29] 



Haverhill 1640-1916 

bome away to the same number, and the nine 
slain of the enemy. It ushered in a day of great 
heat and shone upon a grief-stricken and ex- 
hausted town. So excessive was the heat that 
the dead had to be to be buried at once, and so 
worn out were the men that they could neither 
make coffins nor dig separate graves. So the 
revered minister and his wife and child were 
buried together, and a single pit in the village 
graveyard received the uncoffined bodies of 
the others slain on that tragic Sabbath morning. 
The Indian deed of Pentucket conveyed terri- 
tory extending from Little River eight miles 
westward and six miles eastward and six miles 
northward. As laid out in a survey of 1666 this 
tract was triangular in shape, the base being 
the irregular line of the river, and the sides, one 
drawn from Holt's rocks and the other from a 
point three and a half miles above the present 
Lawrence dam, meeting in an apex in the north- 
western part of the present town of Hampstead. 
From this territory the General Court set off~ 
but not with the consent of the town-the large 
tract of land southwest from Hawkes' Meadow 
brook along the Merrimac, and embracing the 
water leaps known as the Deer Jump and Bod- 

[30] 



An Historical Address 

well's Falls, which was made a separate town- 
ship in 1725 and called, in honor of the king's 
privy councillor, Methuen. At these falls the 
great Lawrence dam was built, the first stone 
being laid September 19, 1845, and, exactly 
three years later, September 19, 1848, the last 
stone being put into position. So from the 
Methuen territory that was originally Haverhill 
territory, that part of the great mill city that lies 
north of the Merrimac was set off to form in 
May, 1847, the municipality of Lawrence. 
The boundary line between Massachusetts and 
New Hampshire, long in dispute and occasioning 
a border warfare, was settled by the King and 
Council, August 5, 1740, and by this decision 
there was transferred from the Haverhill terri- 
tory to New Hampshire the most of the land 
now embraced in the towns of Hampstead, 
Plaistow, Atkinson and Salem. 
While these towns have a filial relation to Haver- 
hill by reason of their territory's being originally 
Haverhill territory, other towns bear that rela- 
tion by reason of their having been settled by 
Haverhill men. Thus the energy and restless- 
ness of Haverhill men led to the settlement of 
Pennacook, afterwards called Concord, New 

[31] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

Hampshire; for it was a party of men from this 
town, led by Ebenezer Eastman and his six yoke 
of oxen with a cart, that traversed the wilderness 
road through the night of May 26, 1726, and 
first settled the future capital of the Granite 
State. So, in 1660, Jonathan Buck went from the 
little gambrel cottage on Water street, nearly 
opposite Mill Street, to found the town of Bucks- 
port, Maine. So, in 1661, two Haverhill men, 
Michael Johnson and John Pattie, were sent to 
take possession of certain lands on the east side 
of the Connecticut river, and to this new settle- 
ment in New Hampshire they gave the name, 
Haverhill, in memory of the old town from which 
they went. 

Were the way to be traversed not so long it 
would be delightful to watch the little town and 
to listen to its spirited discussions in the years 
between the Indian depredations and the Rev- 
olutionary period. New churches were estab- 
lished in the North and West and East 
parishes, each of the Congregational faith, for 
conservatism frowned upon any new religious 
belief. It refused the use of the First Church 
to George Whitfield, the brilliant and forceful 
Methodist, and it gave no recognition to the 

[32] 



An Historical Address 

Quakers under the leadership of Joseph Peas- 
lee. But in 1764 there came a young Princeton 
graduate of striking manly presence, great spir- 
ituality, wonderful oratory, and the masterful 
qualities of a leader, to preach in the parish 
churches and to be invited to become pastor of 
the West Parish church. When, however, he 
avowed himself as one of the faith of Baptists, 
the church pulpits were closed to him. His per- 
suasiveness and charm had won, meanwhile, 
the sympathy and interest of men of influence 
and wealth in the community, and they opened 
their houses for his teaching. Thus the Reverend 
Hezekiah Smith, preaching a new faith in a com- 
munity largely hostile, first broke the spiritual 
unity that had bound the town, and won recog- 
nition for the Baptists. For forty years he min- 
istered to the church he had founded, dignifying 
his faith by his scholarship and winning adher- 
ents thereto by his personal bearing, and re- 
ceiving when he died in 1805 the universal grief 
of the town as tribute to himself as a preacher 
and citizen. 

The village that had clustered on Water and 
Main Streets began to expand. In 1744 Front 
street, renamed Merrimack street in 1838, was 

[33] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

laid out two-and-one-half rods wide through the 
alder-grown parsonage lands. Interest in ship 
building arose, and the river side of Water 
Street, heretofore kept open, was used for ship 
yards and wharves. The serenity of peace, how- 
ever, in these years yielded often to the alarums 
of war, and Haverhill men fought and made hon- 
orable record in all of the memorable battles 
of the French war. 

The clouds of conflict with Great Britain were 
arising, and Haverhill in its town meetings was 
not lacking in spirited denunciations of the exac- 
tions of the mother country. It acted, too, as 
energetically as it talked spiritedly. It appointed 
committees of inspection and correspondence; it 
provided for supplies of ammunition and fire 
arms; it added to the three military companies 
then existing, a fourth; and these companies 
were drilled that they might be in readiness for 
the call to arms. In obedience to instructions 
from the Provincial Congress a company of sixty- 
three minute men,— "as they are to be ready 
at a minute's warning,"— was raised. When the 
news of the fight at Lexington reached Haverhill, 
just after noon on April 19, 1775, these men were 
ready :— 

[34] 



An Historical Address 

"Swift as their summons came they left 
The plough mid-furrow standing still, 
The half-ground corn grist in the mill, 

The spade in earth, the axe in cleft," 

and started, minute men and militia to the 
number of one hundred and five, on the march 
to Cambridge. The summons came close follow- 
ing a disastrous conflagration in the village. 
Three days before, on the Sabbath, a fire had 
swept the west side of Main street and left but 
ruins from the Common to White's Corner. 
Seventeen buildings in the very heart of the 
town were destroyed, and some of the minute- 
men left their work over these smouldering 
embers, responsive to the orders to march. 
In frustrating the plans of General Gage to sur- 
prise Lexington and Concord, a son of Haverhill, 
William Baker, a youth of twenty years, played 
an important part. He was employed in Hall's 
distillery in Gile's Court, now Portland street, 
Boston. One mid-April day there came into 
this place a woman who was quartered with one 
of the British regiments. Being partially intox- 
icated, she unwittingly disclosed the designs 
of the British to march that night to Concord. 

[35] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

Recognizing the importance of this disclosure 
Baker immediately carried the information to 
General Warren's headquarters, passing the 
sentries and guards without suspicion because 
he was known to be an employee of the distillery. 
Finding Warren absent, Baker gave the informa- 
tion to Adjutant Devens. Immediately plans 
were formed for arousing the minute-men, and 
in those plans the duty was assigned to Baker 
of having a horse ready for Paul Revere on the 
Charlestown shore. Baker returned to Haver- 
hill, enlisted for the war, won by his ability in 
military service the rank of captain, and died a 
half century later in Providence, Rhode Island. 
Two days after the fight at Lexington,a horseman, 
John Tracy of Marblehead, rode excitedly into 
the village with the news that the British troops 
were on their way to Haverhill, cutting and de- 
stroying all before them, and would be there on 
the following morning. The people were panic 
stricken. Horses were saddled, oxen were har- 
nessed to carts into which household goods were 
thrown, and the villagers gathered on the Com- 
mon prepared for flight. In the East parish the 
people sought refuge in the sombre depths of 
the hemlocks by the Great Pond,~Kenoza. 

[36] 



An Historical Address 

The alarm proved to be a false one, sent in many 
directions and instigated by the British to create 
terror and prevent the sending of soldiers to 
the front. 

The Provincial Congress, hastily summoned af- 
after the Lexington fight, among other acts 
established post riders and post offices in order 
that there might be communication between 
Cambridge, the headquarters of the American 
army, and the principal towns, and then and 
thus the first Haverhill postmaster, Simon 
Greenough, was appointed. 
In the battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775, 
seventy-four Haverhill men took part, and of 
their number two, John Eaton and Simeon Pike, 
were killed. In this engagement Colonel James 
Brickett of Haverhill was severely wounded. 
As he was borne from the field he met General 
Warren, who stopped to greet him. Warren was 
without arms; Colonel Brickett proffered him 
his; and bearing these Warren fought and gave 
his life in the engagement. 

In the more than eight years of the Revolu- 
tionary struggle the town of Haverhill contrib- 
uted its full quota of men and its full share of 
expenditure. The cost of the war, the payment 

[37] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

of bounty money and the supporting of families 
of the soldiers placed a heavy burden upon the 
town, but its courage never weakened, its hope 
never lessened, its determination never was brok- 
en. In all of the town meetings the votes and 
resolutions showed profound interest in the patriot 
cause and unswerving loyalty to it. The votes 
passed, the resolutions and addresses adopted, 
were warmly discussed, but the decisions showed 
that the actuating principles were courageous 
and unselfish. 

The close of the war left the burden of debt 
and severe taxation upon the people, and, taking 
advantage of this condition, certain leaders,under 
the direction of Daniel Shay, sought to inflame 
the people against the restraints of law and gov- 
ernment. This insurrection, known as Shay's 
Rebellion, manifested itself strongly in the 
western part of the state, where mobs of inflamed 
men at Northampton prevented the sitting of 
the Court of Common Pleas, in Worcester took 
possession of the Court House, and in Spring- 
field threatened and alarmed the people until 
they were dispersed by a strong band of militia. 
The town of Boston was moved by these dis- 
turbances and the manifest spirit of rebellion 

[38] 



An Historical Address 

to send a circular letter to every town in the 
state "concerning the common interest of the 
country." To make reply to this letter Haverhill 
in town meeting appointed a committee of 
which General Brickett was chairman. The 
wise, patriotic, and dignified reply which this 
committee presented, is a document of which 
Haverhill may well be proud. A later age may 
read it with profit and apply its philosophy to 
the problems of its own times. 
When the war was over, with the spirit that 
it has never lacked the town set its face towards 
the future, and sought to rebuild its shattered 
industries. The shipyards took on new life; 
the wharves were busy with commerce. Ox 
teams brought in the produce of the North to 
be shipped by vessels which, towed by horses 
to Newburyport, spread there their sails to voy- 
age to the West Indies, to London and to other 
ports. Returning they brought cargoes of goods 
from these places to be distributed from the 
home port to the surrounding country by the 
oxen express. 

It was a red-letter day for the town when on 
November 4-5, 1789, the revered President, 
Washington, paid it the honor of a visit, staying 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

over night in Harrod's tavern, "The Free- 
mason's Arms," where the City Hall now stands, 
greeting graciously the people of the village, 
praising the beauty of the place, reviewing the 
veteran troops,— 

"When each war-scarred Continental, 

Leaving smithy, mill and farm, 
Waved his rusted sword in welcome, 

And shot off his old king's arm. 

Slowly passed that august presence 
Down the thronged and shouting street; 

Village girls, as fair as angels, 
Scattering flowers around his feet. 

And he stood up in his stirrups, 

Looking up and looking down 
On the hills of Gold and Silver 

Rimming round the little town,-- 

And he said, the landscape sweeping 

Slowly with his ungloved hand, 
'I have seen no prospect fairer 

In this goodly Eastern land.'" 

[40] 



An Historical Address 

Across the long vista of many years the memor- 
ies of this visit of Washington shine clear and 
golden. 

In the later years of the eighteenth century and 
the earlier years of the nineteenth the town was 
fortunate in the many families of refinement 
and culture that dwelt here and that drew as 
their guests refined and scholarly people from 
other towns. John Quincy Adams, visiting here 
his aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Shaw, of whom he rev- 
erently said, "If the Protestant Church tolerated 
canonization, she would have deserved to stand 
among the foremost in the calendar," and in 
whose family he fitted for the senior class of 
Harvard College, found in the youth of the town 
delightful associates, and the plain living was 
accompanied by excellent thinking and sprightly 
wit. The spiritual summons to do missionary 
work in far off lands took Harriet Atwood Newell 
in 1812 to the Isle of France, and, from across 
the river, Anne Haseltine Judson to Burma. 
The Haverhill Academy, founded in 1827,~the 
building is that now occupied by the Whittier 
School.—brought together a group of young men 
and young women of unusual character. For 
their meeting fifty-seven years later one of 

[41] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

their number, John Greenleaf Whittier, wrote 
the poem, "The Reunion": 

"Dear comrades, scattered wide and far, 

Send from their homes their kindly word, 
And dearer ones, unseen, unheard, 
Smile on us from some heavenly star. 

For life and death with God are one; 

Unchanged by seeming change, His care 
And love are round us here and there ; 

He breaks no thread His hand has spun." 

Coincident with the new interest in education 
which established the Haverhill Academy in 
1827, was the great temperance movement in 
the same year. The use of liquor was almost 
universal. It was served at marriages; it was of- 
fered at funerals; it was a gift that appeared 
constantly in the donations to the ministers; 
it went with the mechanic into the shop, and 
with the farmer into the field ; and in the town of 
3900 inhabitants there were twenty-one places 
where it was sold. To combat its influence de- 
manded brave souls and valiant hearts. The 
Gazette, that led in the movement for temper- 

[42] 



An Historical Address 

ance, lost half of its subscribers; the men who 
advocated it were ridiculed, openly insulted, 
and drawn in effigy about the town; but in five 
years the cause became so strong that but one 
place remained where it could be purchased, 
and in ten years the fires of the last distillery 
were put out. 

At nearly the same time from the First Church 
in the town one division went forth to establish 
the Independent Congregational Church, now 
known as the Centre Church, and another di- 
vision to add its strength to the Universalist 
Church, leaving the traditions of the First 
Church, its location and a large share of its 
funds to the Unitarians, whose society still 
remains the First Parish. 

The little log meeting house built in the Mill 
Lot in 1638 was, after prolonged and bitter dis- 
cussion, succeeded by a new meeting house on 
the Common, built in 1698, and this was replaced 
by a later house, built in 1761, also on the Com- 
mon. Between church and state in these earlier 
years the connection was close, and the meeting 
house was the place where the town met for 
elections and the discussion of matters of poli- 
tics and public interest. 

[43] 



Haverhill 1640-1916 

In the latter part of the eighteenth century 
changes in religious thought influenced some of 
the ministers of the church and many of the 
parishioners to dissent from the strict Congrega- 
tional creed, and the church was cleft into op- 
posing parties. The conditions became so acute 
that those of the old faith withdrew in 1832 to 
form the Independent Congregational Church,— 
the Centre Church. Those who were left were 
divided between the Universalist and the Uni- 
tarian beliefs. An agreement was reached, 
however, by which the Universalists received 
four thousand dollars of the parish fund and 
withdrew, in 1834, to join the church of that 
faith that had been established in 1823. This 
withdrawal left the First Parish Church to the 
Unitarians who since have held it. 
While the church was undivided its house had 
been used freely for the town meetings, but now 
a charge of thirty dollars annually was made 
by the parish for such use by the town. In turn 
the town questioned the ownership of the land,— 
the Common,— on which the meeting house 
stood. The dispute was finally settled by the 
town's paying, in 1837, a thousand dollars for a 
quit claim deed to the land, and the parish's 

[44] 



An Historical Address 

building a new house on the Marsh lot where 
the church now stands. Thus the town acquired 
the land now known as City Hall Park. The 
town meetings, however, from 1828 until the 
building of the first town hall in 1847, were held 
in the various churches and halls of the town, 
going as far west in 1828 as the West Parish 
meeting house, and as far east in the same year 
as the East Parish meeting house, and in later 
years using alternately the Christian Union 
Chapel at Washington Square and the First 
Parish Church. 

There is but time for me to speak of one other 
era in the history of the town. The prelude to 
the Civil War was long, and its notes, harmon- 
ious or discordant, were heard early and clearly 
in Haverhill. The American Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety was organized in Philadelphia in December, 
1833. Of the convention effecting this organiza- 
tion John Greenleaf Whittier was a member. A 
young man, twenty-six years old, with dark, 
flashing eyes, square forehead, his straight 
form clothed in Quaker garb, he was noticeable 
in appearance, and his growing reputation as a 
poet added to the interest in him. Of his ser- 
vice here he said in later life, "I love, perhaps 

[45] 



Haverhill 1640-1916 

too well, the praise and good-will of my fellow 
men; but I set higher value on my name ap- 
pended to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 
than on any title page of any book. Looking over 
a life marked with many errors and shortcom- 
ings, I rejoice that I have been able to maintain 
the pledge of that signature, and in the long 
intervening years— 

'My voice, though not the loudest, has been 

heard 
Wherever Freedom raised her cry of pain.'" 

The Haverhill Anti-Slavery Society was formed 
in April, 1834, and of this society Whittier was the 
corresponding secretary. His poetic power had 
already been dedicated to the cause of freedom 
in his tribute to William Lloyd Garrison, "The 
Slave Ship," "Expostulation," and other poems. 
"The clarion notes from his muse were like the 
inspired appeals of the Hebrew phophets, sum- 
moning the elect of God to do battle with the 
powers of darkness. All along the struggle, too, 
these lyrics of the meek-visaged but fiery-souled 
Quaker rang out their notes of warning and ap- 
peal. And even after rebellion had convulsed 
the land and civil war had summoned its legions 

[46] 



An Historical Address 

to the field, his strains were heard amid the din 
of strife, and the loyal soldiers felt their inspira- 
tion in the camp, on the march, and in the hour 
of battle." 

The country was aflame with discussion. In 
Congress the insolence of the South and the 
supineness of many Northern representatives 
caused most bitter speeches to be uttered. "Be- 
fore you accomplish your purpose," said Raynor 
of North Carolina, in relation to the abolition of 
slavery, "you must march over hecatombs of 
bodies; you must convert every one of your 
ploughshares into swords. Long, long, before 
you reach the banks of the Roanoke, every 
stream will run red with your blood, every hill 
will whiten with your bones. Attempt this wild 
project when you will, and if there be any truth 
in heathen story, the banks of the river Styx 
will be lined with your shivering ghosts for a 
hundred years to come. We will trample you 
under our feet, and trail your crown and sceptre 
in the dust." Freedom of debate and the right 
of petition were denied, and there was intro- 
duced into Congress a resolution known as the 
"Atherton gag," that sought to suppress these. 
In Haverhill a favorite place for the considera- 
te] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

tion of national and local affairs was the hatshop 
of Nathan Webster on Merrimac, just west of 
White's corner. The arrogance of the Southern 
representatives, the repeated threats of seces- 
sion by the South, and especially the obnoxious 
"Atherton gag," aroused the spirit of the men 
who met there. Consequently they drew up a 
petition to be presented in Congress, praying 
that measures peaceably to dissolve the Union 
should be adopted immediately. The paper was 
drafted by Benjamin Emerson, a man who in ap- 
pearance resembled Daniel Webster, and who 
was so uncompromising a foe to slavery and so 
dark in complexion that he was known as "Black 
Ben." The most of the signatures were obtained 
in the Union Evangelical Church on Winter street 
after the Sunday service. The petition was sent 
to John Quincy Adams, and by him presented 
in the House of Representatives on the 14th of 
January, 1842. Immediately a tumult arose. A 
resolution censuring Adams was introduced, and 
the debate upon it was long and fiery. After the 
matter had consumed twelve days, Mr. Adams 
was asked how much more time he would occupy 
in his defence. Mr. Adams reminded his hearers 
that when Warren Hastings was tried, Burke 

[48] 



An Historical Address 

occupied some months in a single speech; he 
hoped, however, to complete his defence in 
ninety days. The resolutions of censure were 
laid on the table, and the result was interpreted 
as a defeat and humiliation of Mr. Adam's 
enemies. The original petition was presented 
to the Haverhill Historical Society in 1908 by 
the trustees of the Adams papers. 

In 1861 the existing military organization of 
Haverhill was the Hale guards, organized by 
General Benjamin F. Butler in July, 1853, and 
with one service performed by it leading, like 
a little thread, back to the Revolution,~for, by 
order of the Governor, it had attended in full 
ranks the funeral of Jonathan Harrington, the 
last survivor of the Battle of Bunker Hill, who, 
dying at the age of 96, was buried in Lexington 
on March 30, 1854. When the outbreak of the 
South seemed imminent and Massachusetts 
sought to be prepared, in obedience to orders 
from Governor Andrew, Captain Messer called a 
meeting of the company on Wednesday, Jan- 
uary 23, 1861. The roll was called. Each mem- 
ber was asked if he was ready to serve his coun- 
try in war if the Governor should summon them 

[49] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

to service, and every mother's son of them 
unhesitatingly answered, "Yes." 
On Monday, April 15, President Lincoln called 
for 75,000 militia to serve for three months. The 
call found Massachusetts prepared with her 
full quota. On Tuesday the sturdy men from 
Marblehead arrived early in Boston, the first 
of the troops that almost every train brought. 
On Wednesday the Sixth Regiment, the first to 
be sent from Massachusetts, drawn up before 
the State House, received its colors from the 
Governor and with God-speeds went proudly 
on its way, little dreaming of the momentous 
events awaiting it. On Thursday Massachusetts 
was fired with pride by news of the enthusiasm 
that cheered and applauded this regiment as it 
marched down Broadway. On Friday it was 
thrilled by the message that this regiment had 
been attacked in the streets of Baltimore, and 
shocked by the knowledge that Massachusetts 
men, the first victims of the war, lay dead in 
that city. 

On Saturday in mid-afternoon the ringing of 
the bells, the signal agreed upon, announced 
that the summons had come for the Haverhill 
company. The members immediately gathered 

[50] 



An Historical Address 

at the armory. Close by there gathered, also, to 
act as escort, the veterans of the Haverhill 
Light Infantry, some of whom had belonged to 
that company, when, in the war of 1812, it had 
marched from the church green,~the Common,— 
to Charlestown. The firemen assembled, also, 
to lend their picturesque presence to the proces- 
sion, and the throng of men, women and chil- 
dren filled the ways. There were farewell exer- 
cises and the presenting of gifts on the Common, 
and then the whole concourse moved through 
the streets to the railway station. The band 
played America, there were cheers and tears, 
prayers and farewells, and the train moved off. 
The tragedy of war had touched the town. 

The record of Haverhill in the four years of the 
Civil War is too long to be told as a part of this 
address; the deeds of heroism and bravery too 
many to be recounted herein; the list of heroes 
too full to be recorded here. 

"They were as noble, brave and true, 
As ever followed noisy drum; 

Their silent ranks pass in review 

With noiseless tread and voices dumb." 

[51] 



Haverhill 1640-1915 

Lives were offered in service to the country; 
but grief, with all her tears, gave place to patriotic 
pride. When Clarence Woodman, killed in his 
youth at Antietam, was buried from the First 
Parish Church, there were quoted, in the spirit 
of the hour, these patriotic and pathetic lines 
from Cato: 

"Thanks to the gods My boy had done his duty. 
Welcome, my son! There, set him down, my 

friends, 
Full in my sight, that I may view at leisure 
The bloody corpse, and count those glorious 

wounds. 
How beautiful is death when earned by virtue! 

Who would not be that youth! What pity 'tis 
That we can die but once to save our country! 
Why sits this sadness on your brows, my friends? 
I should have blushed if Cato's house had stood 
Secure and flourished in a civil war." 

The year 1865 opened with a feeling of confidence 
that the end of the long war was near. Hope 
smiled upon the soldier in the field and upon 
those who waited at home. News of the capture 

[52] 



An Historical Address 

of Richmond came on April 3. The bells were 
rung in jubilant peals, forty guns were fired on 
the Common, fireworks were sent blazing into 
the heavens, and huge bonfires glowed in the 
dusk of evening. When the news of Lee's sur- 
render came on Monday, April 10, there was a 
public procession and a meeting of rejoicing 
in the Town Hall, and not even the down-pouring 
of the rain could quench the fires of exultation. 
On Saturday, the 15th, when the trees were 
beautiful with the fresh verdure of spring, the 
myriad birds flitting and singing, the sky clear 
and glorious, like the cloud that creates black- 
ness, like the shock that engenders horror, came 
the news of the assassination of Lincoln, and 
the emblems of rejoicing were changed for those 
of mourning ; the bells, still vibrant with victory, 
pealed of death; and everywhere were the hushed 
voices of sorrow. The great Ship of State had 
come into port from its perilous voyage, safe 
and with the victory won, but with its Captain 
dead upon its deck. On June 1, the day appointed 
for national fasting and prayer, the citizens 
suspended their customary occupations and 
filled the Town Hall to listen to a eulogy on 
Lincoln by the Honorable Charles J. Noyes, 

[53] 



Haverhill 1640-1916 

while fifty-six minute guns, one for each year 
of the martyred President's life, boomed from 
the Common. 

The record of the brave boys who fought should 
be supplemented by the story of the strong- 
hearted and helpful women who labored un- 
ceasingly for the comfort of the soldiers. The 
Soldiers' Relief Society, organized on April 21, 
1861, devoted its untiring labors to furnishing 
articles for the comfort of the soldiers, and there 
was no want which it did not attempt to fill. The 
list of supplies that it forwarded is long and 
varied, and every gift was the dearer and brought 
the greater comfort because it was inspired 

"By heavenly pity, by sweet sympathy, 
By love, supremest in adversity." 

Haverhill contributed to the fighting forces 
thirteen hundred men, including seventy-three 
commissioned officers, and her population (I860) 
was but 9,995; and the town raised and expended 
on account of the war, exclusive of State Aid, 
$118,135.49, while for aid to the families of vol- 
unteers she gave $114,542.24, although her 
valuation (1865) was but $3,798,550. 

[54] 



An Historical Address 

When the war was ended the Soldiers' Relief 
Society gracefully suggested that the erection of 
a soldiers' monument would be a fitting close to 
their labors: "The Soldiers' Relief Society, as 
is eminently fitting, turn with tender hearts and 
tearful eyes to the last kindly act allowed for 
the completion of their mission—the raising of 
a memorial to the heroic dead." From this in- 
ception came the raising of the monument that 
records incut in its die the names of one-hun- 
dred-and-eighty-six honored dead of the war, and 
bears above their names the inscription: 

"IN GRATEFUL TRIBUTE TO THE 
MEMORY OF THOSE WHO, ON 
LAND AND ON THE SEA, DIED 
THAT THE REPUBLIC MIGHT LIVE, 
THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED 
BY THE CITIZENS OF HAVERHILL 
A. D. 1869." 

The year 1870, which marked the change from 
the town form of government under which Ha- 
verhill had lived for two-hundred-and-thirty- 
five years— it was incorporated as a town in 1645, 
being previously a plantation— to the city form, 

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Haverhill 1640-1915 

sharply marks, also, the line between the old 
Haverhill and the new. The shade trees on 
Merrimack street were cut down (1871); busi- 
ness blocks displaced the old-time residences 
there; lower Washington Street changed from 
a village road with cottage houses to a street 
of brick manufacturies; the hay scales and the 
old town pump with its iron "calabash," for 
drinking, in front of City Hall, were swept 
away (1872); the tall liberty pole in Washing- 
ton Square— the highest in the state—erected 
by the Torrent Engine Company, was cut down; 
the First Baptist Church, on "Baptist Hill," 
that once marked the western boundary of the 
village,— where the Academy of Music is now,— 
was demolished; the historic "Christian Chap- 
el,"— the old South Church,— on the corner of 
Washington and Essex Streets, was torn down; 
the memorable Attwood house on Crescent 
Place, consecrated by the sweet and saintly 
lives of those who had dwelt there and made 
it a centre of Christian activities, by the founding 
there of the first Sabbath School in 1817, and by 
the forming there of the Haverhill Benevolent 
Association in 1818, was destroyed (1872), and 
the first town school house, close by, was re- 

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An Historical Address 

moved the next year; the Washington Street 
schoolhouse and lot, a short distance east of 
Railroad Square, was sold for $20,350; the age- 
browned Haverhill Bridge, antique and musty, 
but quaintly interesting, built in 1794 at a cost of 
$40,000, rebuilt in 1808~the Bridge Street stone 
bears this date,— and made a covered bridge in 
1825, was sold for $310, and removed in ten days,- 
and its timbers were found to be as sound as 
when first they were hewn, and the new bridge 
that replaced it was opened first for carriages 
on January 1, 1874; the beautiful new High 
School building, now the Central Ninth School, 
was dedicated on August 31, 1874; on October 
5 of the same year the schooner "Lucy May," 
—the last structure of the Haverhill ship yards, 
—was launched, with flags and pennons flying, 
from just below the present County Bridge; and 
on November 4 the Public Library was dedi- 
cated. So 

"where the slow years came and went, 
And left not affluence but content, 
Now flashes in our dazzled eyes 
The electric fight of enterprise." 

The era of romantic history and poetic tradition 

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Haverhill 1640-1915 

has been succeeded by a more utilitarian one, 
characterized by rapid growth, increase of wealth, 
the coming of many stranger peoples from many 
diverse lands to settle here, and new modes 
of life made possible,— yes, obligatory,~by new 
conditions and new inventions. The city has 
been swept by disastrous fire in 1882, and risen 
in greater strength from its ashes. It has felt 
again the thrill of war—the Spanish War—in 
1898, and shown anew its patriotic spirit. It has 
received as a part of its corporate body, in 1897, 
the beautiful and academic town of Bradford, 
long bound to it by ties of common interest and 
association, and, preserving for her the inher- 
itance of her name and her traditions, it has en- 
riched her by the extension of its care and 
beneficence to meet her needs. It has com- 
memorated with remarkable exercises and cere- 
monies, in 1890, the two-hundred-and-fiftieth 
anniversary of its settlement, when it was hon- 
ored by receiving from the hands of its distin- 
guished guest, the Honorable Daniel Gurteen, 
Chairman of the Local Board of Haverhill, Eng- 
land, the felicitous greetings of the old English 
town to the New England city. It received, also, 
on that occasion from its poet son, John Green- 

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An Historical Address 

leaf Whittier, the tribute of his poem, "Hav- 
erhill." 

We clasp with reverent, loving hands the story 
of the achievements of the past, but reverently, 
and with love, also, we dream and pray that the 
records of the city in the years to come may be 
no less golden and precious; and that the suc- 
cessive generations to whom its honor, its pros- 
perity and its progress shall be entrusted, may 
hold these legacies as a treasure not to be 
dimmed or despoiled, but to be made brighter 
and to be enriched, as the tale of the years shall 
stretch on. 

"Hold fast your Puritan heritage, 
Eut let the free thought of the age 
Its light and hope and sweetness add 
To the stern faith the fathers had." 

I have drawn my pictures from the closed book 
of the past; and therein are pictures of the 
forest land that knew no smoke from the white 
man's dwelling, of the river that knew no skiff 
save the Indian's light canoe; pictures of the 
timid and cautious adventuring that brought 
the first little band of colonists from Ipswich 

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Haverhill 1640-1915 

and Newbury to found the plantation at Pen- 
tucket, the slow beginnings, and the stern and 
high spirit that sought to build with law and 
order; pictures of the days of trial and the days 
of dread, the Indian raids, the deeds of heroism 
and bravery; pictures of the growth of the spirit 
of independence and broadening liberty, of the 
resistance to oppression, of the Revolutionary up- 
rising; pictures of the town, a century older, shar- 
ing in that patriotic zeal that offered life and pos- 
sessions that national union might be maintained 
and universal liberty established; pictures of 
the beginnings and growth of industries that 
have given us national and world-wide import- 
ance; of changes in the forms of government 
that have kept us in the van of advancing econ- 
omic conditions :— a panorama of the growth of 
a New England settlement that became a village, 
grew into a town, expanded into a city,~and 
marked each era of its expansion by the swelling 
and ripening of broader interests and deeper 
and fuller sympathies. No more grateful task 
could be mine than to tell,~how imperfectly I 
well know,— this story of the past. 
May he who in after years shall tell the story of 
the city of Haverhill, find nothing to record that 

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An Historical Address 

shall fall below the best traditions of her past, 
and may all of her children so love her that they 
shall find constant in their hearts the prayer of 
her poet son--, 

"I pray God bless the good old town:" 

Surely no privilege could be greater than is 
mine today,~the privilege of extending for the 
City of Haverhill on the two-hundred-and-sev- 
enty-fifth anniversary of her settlement to her 
guests her cordial welcome, and to all her sons 
and daughters, at home and abroad, her loving 
greetings and the expression of her warm and 
kindly interest. 

Proud of her history and her traditions; proud 
of the men and women who here have lived and 
worked; preached and taught and sown the seed 
of larger thought and of prosperity within her 
confines,— 

"And never in the hamlet's bound 
Was lack of sturdy manhood found; 
And never failed the kindred good 
Of brave and helpful womanhood;—" 

proud of her growth, her honored standing 

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Haverhill 1640-1915 

among the cities of the Commonwealth, the 
intelligence and high character of her people; 
proud of the prosperity within her marts of 
trade, the peace within her streets, the harmony 
within her factories; she turns to the future a 
face shining with hope and the confidence of 
fortunes even greater and brighter than those of 
her past years. 

Giving greeting to her sons and daughters, she 
asks of all her children the quickening of their 
love and the renewal of their loyalty and their 
help by word and deed to make her a City 
Beautiful,— a city of exalted character, of just 
dealings, of wisdom and knowledge and material 
prosperity,— a city where the equality in rights 
and the brotherhood of all shall be the founda- 
tions of abiding peace and good will. 



[62] 



Adrift on Time's returnless tide, 
As waves that follow waves, we glide. 
God grant we leave upon the shore 
Some waif of good it lacked before. 

Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth, 
Some added beauty to the earth; 
Some larger hope, some thought to make 
The sad world happier for its sake. 

As tenants of uncertain stay, 
So may we live our little day 
That only grateful hearts shall fill 
The homes we leave in Haverhill. 

The singer of a farewell rhyme, 
Upon whose outmost verge of time 
The shades of night are falling down, 
I pray, God bless the good old town 

Haverhill : Whittier. 



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